Spare
by anotheropti
Summary: What had simply started as an argument escalates to something much, much more. (Originally part of No One Like You)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Also originally part of _No One Like You_, I just do not believe this needs to be anywhere in association with that fic! It's way too dark, strays into weird territory, and is generally just not what you want in Parks fic I don't think? I don't know, there aren't many of them.

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><p>It was a cloudless night in Pawnee, replete with a nearly black lighting and few cars or people roaming the streets. There weren't many days where the so-called nightlife of the Midwestern town sprang into action across the entirety of her but it was especially quiet and still. In between hedges, a few figures would move, but they were usually just household pets left out too for the night when their forgetful owners returned from a night of drinking. The animals were the only real denizens of the roads and sidewalks at that hour, padding up and down from house to house searching for their owners, rodents to kill, or already dead rodents they could drag away. On one such street a short, dark-haired woman slams the door of her house shut as a tall man, half-dressed and bleary-eyed, screams something at her in a split between rage and begging. He sits in the car in the driveway for a few minutes before starting it up and backing out, leaving the woman behind in the house.<p>

There wasn't much to speak of in the house, at least nothing remarkable, but that – in its own way – gave the place some charm. A few scattered, dirty plates lay on the tables, some actually broken and others just covered in forgotten meals, and the carpet was in dire need of repair or replacement. A few pictures hung on the walls of the woman and the man, smiling and holding each other, but they were far between and scarce enough that a visitor would have to wonder what the two actually mean to each other. The place didn't reek like some would expect just from seeing it, but it did have a faint odor of a violent mixture between bubble bath and sex. A football jersey was slung over a doorway leading to a bathroom, and the bedroom was missing a door – and judging from the hinges still remaining there, it had been broken off in either a fit of romance or fury. Or both, because based on the relationship of Andy Dwyer and April Ludgate, no one ever knew what to expect from the two of them. Likewise, no one expected anything but marital bliss for them even though April knew better. As far as she was concerned they just hit stumbles every once and a while, nothing more, but sitting there and trying to maintain steady breaths she had to wonder.

She hated having arguments with Andy, but sometimes she couldn't stand some of the things he did. Staring angrily at the contacts on her phone, April hovered over his name for a while before she put the phone away and walked over to the kitchen to try and find something hard enough to put her asleep for a while. Sadly the only thing in their fridge were two beers and a box of veggie-fried rice that definitely wasn't any good, so she took one of the beers out and took a few sips before pouring the chilled piss-water out into the sink.

Tapping her fingers against the counter and considering how much of a problem the fallout of the night would be, April sighed. She just wanted him to understand her a little better was all, and she didn't need the level of conflict that things had escalated to. Still, this is where they were so April just hoped he drove to a familiar place like City Hall or Leslie's and slept it off.

"…and _that's _Ya Heard with, your host, Perd Hapley, signing off. And since it is both nighttime and a good night, I shall say: goodnight Pawnee."

The TV had been running all throughout their argument but April had never focused on anything. She should have been glad because the annoying ramblings of Perd would have made her unreasonably angry, which would have probably been directed at Andy. Shutting the TV off, she sat down on the couch and pulled one of the pillows into her lap and started playing with the frayed stitching. She couldn't even remember where they got it, or how it had survived so many years surrounded by two overgrown children that somehow made it to adulthood and a dog. Pulling at a string that had run off the stitching, April ended up squeezing one of the corners into a messy bunch before she had to put it down. Sitting down alone, it wasn't long before the three-legged dog limped over to her and, with some assistance, moved up to the couch to rest his head on her lap.

"Hey Champion," she whispered to him, scratching the fur on his neck, "you don't know why your dad's such a dick, do you?"

His only response was to look at her with those big, dumb eyes like he wanted to answer her but just couldn't. Since he was a dog, it seemed pretty reasonable to April.

"Yeah, thanks," she groaned.

The house was silent save for the uneven breathing of the dog and April occasionally muttering to herself and pulling the phone out of her pocket to stare at it and shove it back. Looking out through the sliding doors that led to their backyard, April tried to find something out there to occupy her rambling thoughts, but in the end it was just a fence and some trees. Maybe a few of those leaves would rustle and she could imagine what it would be like to see a wild animal come smashing through the yard, but she wasn't going to get that. Instead all there was to be seen was a black, shrouded night and the flicker of two bright lights, off and then on before quickly rotating their beams through the house. When April focused on them they quickly pivoted away from her and were gone, leaving the yard once again in its previous midnight embrace.

"What?" she said to herself, pushing Champion aside softly and trying not to disturb his sleep.

Walking over to the see-through panes, April tried to search for the two lights again. To her they looked like flashlights clicking on, and the lights that shone through her house weren't particularly bright. Outside, however, it was still a sea of black with only the occasional movement of leaves in the higher trees forcing a slight image of the yard into focus. It must have just been some dumb neighborhood kids trying to creep on her again, she figured, so April sat back down next to Champion and waited. It only took a few minutes for her prediction to come to fruition, this time a singular beam of light striking through first her bedroom window and then into the living room once again. Jumping up the moment the beam started to move, April threw the door open and called out when there was a sound of hurried footsteps. However, the light stayed there unmoving.

"Just go on the internet if you want tits you fucking idiots," she yelled out, holding her arm up to block some of the light out.

The brightness shone for a few moments more, almost like it was hovering there. Quickly, it died out again but no footsteps followed it like she anticipated. When April yelled her voice didn't echo, but on top of the strange silence from the kids staying behind the reverberating silence was unnerving. April didn't like the absence of _everything _that night. Sliding the door closed again, this time feeling her hand shake a little for some undefined reason, she closed the short curtains that hung mostly unused to the side of the doors. Something about the lights, and the return of just one of them, made April shiver. It certainly wasn't the cold night, since they finally figured out how to get their thermostat working, but she could feel a coarse hand running along her spine when she thought about the narrow beams breaking through the doors like inquisitive eyes.

Normally she didn't care about kids being kids, since she regularly did much worse to other people, but something about them – there was definitely something about those little eye-lights – made April shut off the living room light and slip into her bedroom. Any worrying about Andy would have to wait until morning, because she was too busy closing the curtains in all of her rooms. By the time April made it to the bedroom, the sounds of light footsteps – burst of little pitter-patters like running children – sounded from around the house. Shrugging it off as annoyed kids looking for another method ingress, or just the neighborhood strays going about their nightly business, April finished up in the bedroom. Something about those footsteps should have been alarming, or at least they should tipped her off by the proximity of the noise, but she had gone past the point of focusing on them and tried to figure out whether she should just call Andy and let him back in the house; for all she knew he was sleeping on a street corner with no pants on.

At least, that's what she was thinking until those footsteps returned to focus. Returned to focus only for her to turn around, trying to find the source of them. By now she realized they were a lot closer than they should have been. From the bedroom, looking through the door, everything seemed fine in the living room – Champion was still asleep, drooling a little on the couch but otherwise undisturbed, and all of the curtains and doors were still shut. Taking a tentative step forward, April looked around the threshold and wondering where her sudden anxiety was coming from; there wasn't a sign of anyone there, however. There couldn't be anybody inside anyways, since Andy definitely didn't have his house key and every point of entry was closed off, but April still felt that same spark run across the ridge of her spine.

_This is stupid_

April couldn't help but laugh at the moment and the empty room, causing Champion to stir. Now she was just scaring herself for no reason other than the fun of it she mused to no one. The moment she stopped laughing, in the silence of the Pawnee night, a small childlike laugh answered hers. It was distant, almost imperceptibly far away, but she heard it. She heard the laugh, and then the footsteps again, but she didn't hear something heavy slip into a hand and fall crashing into the back of her head.


	2. Chapter 2

Andy sat in the driveway, trying to parse the situation as best he could. In the dim light of a few street lamps all he could really tell apart from the darkness outside and the interior of the car was the outline of the steering wheel. With his hands resting on it, he shoved his head into the wheel a few times – each time harder than the last – before he threw himself back into the headrest and heaved a deep sigh. It was impossible to think, he thought, so he pulled open the glove box and rummaged around until he found the keys. They had decided to hide them in there, underneath all of the napkins and empty cupcake wrappers, and Andy was glad that he remembered them.

Starting the engine he backed out of the driveway, feeling the need to just drive around the block a few times to let himself settle down. Things had gotten a little heated, and to be honest he couldn't even really remember what had made their argument explode into the situation he was currently in, but Andy knew if he came back in a half an hour April would be just fine. As he turned the first corner of their street, to his right just as he turned, he saw a few people stumbling into their houses. People he probably knew, and had probably gotten drunk with on more than a few occasions, and all he wanted to do was go back inside and get hammered with his wife. Instead he was watching the street for any strays that might leap out ahead of him. Luckily, by the time he made it to the street just opposite of theirs, it hadn't been an issue. With the slow, crunching roll of the tires Andy started to rehearse what he'd say to April when he got back.

"I'm sorry we… no, I'm sorry _I _was an ass," he corrected, gripping the steering wheel harder. "It's your life, blah blah blah, and you can go do what you want – miss my shows for your dumb friend's art show…"

Trailing off, he caught sight of two beams of light shooting upward from the bushes in the backyard of his house. Laughing to himself, picturing April emerging to scare off the would-be peeping Toms full of fire and hate, he tried to focus again on the task at hand. In reality it was one of their more pathetically insignificant shout outs but what was bothering Andy was how quickly it had escalated – and how frequent those arguments were becoming. The first few years of their marriage were great, perfect even, but with the oncoming double-digit anniversary looming ahead of them their home life was turning more strained every night. Feeling himself get angry just thinking about it, Andy picked up whatever CD was lying next to him and shoved it into the player, hoping he could sing it out and pass the next few blocks faster.

The first few seconds of acoustic guitar and a familiar melody sank into the car. April was starting to get obsessed with some weird electronic stuff, most of which he hated, but then she found a really subtle acoustic cover of one of those songs – "Heartbeat" or something, he thought.

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><p>"What's this?" Andy asked, moving his head to the rhythm of the fingerpicking. "This is awesome."<p>

"It's a cover of one of The Knife's songs," she explained.

"Oh is that the-"

"Yeah," she interrupted hurriedly.

While the song continued playing, April stood up and walked over to Andy. Putting her arms under his and resting her head on his chest she started to sway slightly, pushing into him and hinting that she wanted him to follow suit. He wrapped his arms around her back and together they moved slowly to the beat of the tune. Andy thought that he could actually get into this guy's stuff, noting to himself that he needed to remember to ask April about it later. Turning over and over, quietly and slowly to the music, Andy thought this was a good turn in their relationship – something to bring them a little closer. Then he realized April was shaking a little and when she spoke her voice was harsh and hoarse.

"I'm sorry this is starting to suck," she said quietly, muffled by his shirt.

Just as she whispered that the song ended on a single, dreamy chord fading out with a held vocal line.

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><p>Gritting his teeth and moving his hand over, he stopped the song halfway through the playtime and ejected the CD. He'd have to go without music while he did this, he thought. Passing up their house the first time he noticed that the curtains were closed all throughout and the lights were off. Slumping forward slightly in his seat, he wondered just how many times he would have to actually do this before they talked about it. Nightly drives and walks were becoming a norm, something that Andy generally hated to do in the first place, but by now he had a semi=permanent room at Leslie's place and spent more and more weekends hanging out with the triplets than his own wife.<p>

Coming to turn once again around the adjacent street, Andy watched a balding man walk his dog halfway to the center of the street before turning back and going inside his house. Shaking his head, he scanned around for anything more exciting like a dog he could at least hang around with for a few more hours before eventually calling Leslie and asking if he could spend the night. Abruptly, a voice broke through the night loudly:

"Just go on the internet if you want tits you fucking idiots."

Andy shook his head, wondering if the lights he saw earlier were just a bunch of kids being weird again. It was always funny to him how often he'd find a kid sitting in one of the bushes while April took her a shower at night – to be honest it should have been creepy, and he knew that, but he couldn't blame the kid. All Andy did to deter these visits was let Champion walk out and sniff around even though Andy knew all the dog would do is find the kid and try to lick him to death. Still, the dog's presence at all in their yard was usually enough to send the dumb hormonal teenagers running.

Suddenly remembering that he'd turned the heat on, and sweating as a result, Andy rolled his window down and turned it off. The chilly night air was a refreshing kick in the head for a few seconds. Outside, and rather unusually, the night was dead quiet. Frequently there would be dogs barking at this hour, or even kids running around loitering and vandalizing (usually Andy and April as well) but that night it was silent. Andy started to feel the coolness hit his bare legs and the shivering was already starting. Making an excuse to himself to block out the unwavering absence of anything resembling Indiana night-works, Andy remembered that he wasn't wearing pants and quickly rolled the window back up. By the time his third lap came around, Andy stopped just before the turn to his street and caught a rather peculiar sight.

In the street, walking in the direction Andy was driving but off-center and towards one of the houses opposite of Andy's street was a figure dressed entirely in white. Its hands were brought up to chest-level and put together, shaking slightly like someone wringing their hands, and the face – Andy couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman from that distance and with the alcohol hitting his system now – was hidden by the natural light of the hour. The figure took uneven, awkward steps like a child just learning for the first time. Apparently the person hadn't noticed Andy, or at least hadn't bothered to make their awareness known, because all they did was continue their odd, obtuse path before disappearing behind the rows of bushes surrounding a house on the opposite street.

"Weird," he murmured to himself, tapping the steering wheel with a finger and shaking his head.

About to turn, Andy stopped when he noticed another figure walk out from beside the street by Andy's house. Then another, and soon more followed – more and more – before there was a small procession leading down the road. At the head of the pack was a very tall and incredibly wide man dressed in a deep red cover, his hands on a small object clutched to his chest, while those around him moved a large bag on their shoulders to the hedge rows behind Mrs. Davidson's house. It took another few minutes for the rather impressive group, all figures dressed in white save for the man, to make their way across the street.

"Okay, weirder," he said, this time louder and with a hint of something else tracing his tongue.

As Andy pulled up to his driveway, he looked over to their neighbor's yard and couldn't see any sign of the strange parade from before. The Davidsons were out for the week anyways, which he only knew because they had laughably asked the two of them to housesit at first – which at first was going well then April asked if she could have a small, controlled fire inside the house – but he wondered if they had brought over guests to housesit; bizarre guests who had midnight walks with a dozen of their friends, but guests either way.

Turning into the driveway, Andy sighed and hoped that maybe he'd get to sleep in bed that night. Running to the door, squeezing his arms to try and find some heat for the little bit he'd have to sit out there waiting for April to answer him, Andy stopped dead in his tracks when he noticed that the door was ever so slightly agape.


	3. Chapter 3

She jerked her head up, or tried to, but there wasn't much motion she could make without her entire head erupting in pain. She couldn't see anything – everything was impossible to distinguish – and she moving but other than that she couldn't tell what was happening.

God, her head hurt.

Other than that, she couldn't really tell much of anything. Except that she was outside, that much was clear, and there were faint sounds. Almost like voices but _not _voices of anyone she knew. They weren't the voices of people as far as she was concerned.

"-ohim meth…" a low voice murmured.

It was all she could catch, but it was definitely something. Those were words, she could tell, but as far as April was concerned they weren't in any language she knew. But the conviction and rhyme felt like they were meant to be used as language. Blinding pain was all that she knew then, and things went black again.

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><p>It wasn't unusual for April to leave the door open, he thought, but it <em>was <em>unusual that the door would be open when she went to sleep. Inside, lights were out and he was thankful that he knew the house inside and out. Pitch black was a description for nights like these, but this felt different. There was an air, a chill that touched his skin quietly from the night's breeze that left him uneasy about the quiet darkness inside his home, and Andy didn't know whether it was because he was still sans-pants or if there was actual something here bothering him. His feet were still tripping over one another every few steps, but at least in the black he didn't have to worry about unfamiliar territory.

Just like outside, the house was deathly still and the only sounds he heard were his feet softly rustling the carpet and smacking against tile. Nothing, not a huff of Champion's loud breathing or even April's occasional snores, was making so much as a whisper throughout the rooms. Slipping into the kitchen, it too was dark. Feeling around for the counter, his hand touched something wet and nearly caused him to fall but he figured that April just spilled something and didn't bother to clean it up. Another bizarre change, something that had been altered in just the little while he had been gone, was a strange smell in the house.

Something almost sweet but tinged with a heavy aromatic weight filled the kitchen, and it was starting to make Andy queasy and his head began to throb, so he left it immediately. She must have spilled a lot of _something _for it to make the kitchen reek like that. He walked to the bedroom without major incident, intending to slip into bed and hopefully apologize to April without initiating another argument, but when he got there it too was dark and empty.

"April?" he called out, but there was no immediate response.

He turned the light on, anticipating the sight of her lying in bed with headphones in but there was no one in the bed. He even noticed that the sheets were still in place from the night before, all rustled and half-tucked like they were every morning. In fact, nothing seemed different from when he left. Turning around, the light of the bulb in the bedroom illuminated the living room only slightly.

Elsewhere, the dark was otherworldly in how abruptly it staved off the rest of the house's lights. The edged counter by the kitchen was impossible to distinguish through the shadows, and the couch was only just highlighted by the shuttered bulb in the bedroom. Looking over the living room, nothing seemed strange at first. Stepping forward, his foot encountered more wetness – and God, the smell seemed to be moving around the house all of a sudden – and when he looked down there was only a dark discoloration in that spot. Bending down and looking at it, it smelled no different than the odor permeating through the rest of the house. When he looked down at his foot to see if anything had stuck, there was a maroon splotch on the sole of his foot. His eyes also caught sight of something on his hand and when turned it over a similarly red stain was working its way through the lines on his palm.

Looking around – the redness in one small stain by the bedroom, the same hand that was on the counter covered in that same _red_, and the smell – Andy realized something else about the quiet solitude.

"Champion?" he said loudly, looking around the living room for the dog.

His bed was usually either beside theirs, or actually in the bed, and since April wasn't in bed he was most likely with her somewhere. The struggle was figuring out where _somewhere _was, and why – and Andy couldn't think anymore, because that smell kept getting stronger. Like a chalky, noisome hit to the nostrils, it was suddenly everywhere in the house. He tried to see if it was coming from the backyard, the bathroom, anywhere but wherever he went it was still seeping in from a different source. The only place he hadn't checked was the kitchen, and he smacked himself on the forehead when he realized how obvious it was.

Realizing that he'd smacked himself with the sticky, red hand Andy looked in the bathroom mirror to find a small bit of the stuff on his forehead that didn't want to come out. Moving on, he left to go check the kitchen where it was still absurdly dark. As he walked towards the ceiling light with the little dangling chain that was the only means of turning it on – they swore that one day they'd replace it, but that was starting to get on two years in the past – the stench of something got more forceful. It was to the point that he reflexively gagged at the proximity of the foreign smell, and he had to cover his nose and breathe through his palm to make to the light.

It was so weird to him that Champion didn't notice he'd come home. April never walked him this late, and she barely walked him at all, so he _had _to be here. But he didn't immediately bound towards him when Andy walked in. And he didn't notice the smell, because Andy was sure that Champion would have been all over the kitchen trying to root it out.

Stepping forward, the combination of the pungent aroma that was starting to worry Andy and the crisp blackness made him shiver, and it was even worse when stepped in more of that wet something. All of a sudden turning the lights on seemed like a horrible idea to him, and his foot was stuck in the warm, amorphous puddle of something that just kept going. No matter how far he pushed his toes out or tested with his foot, the liquid didn't stop. It pooled around his foot, dipped between his toes, and – and then, he touched something with his big toe.

Something unmoving, solid and, as his toe stayed against the mass, it was losing heat rapidly. It felt familiar almost, like a bundle of smooth carpet but still that wasn't quite it. It was too unusual and coarse for that but Andy couldn't piece it together, so he had to find the resolve to pull the little chain that was now hanging against his chest.

With a satisfying click, the chain bounced back upwards and the lightbulb flickered for a moment before turning on completely.

Andy's body froze, every muscle coming to a grinding halt in that second when he could clearly make out what he was stepping in and what he had touched. There, lying in the center of the kitchen on the tiles, was a small motionless form. The familiar brown and white patterns, the three little legs, those were all too familiar. What made Andy bend over and nearly empty his stomach on the tiles was the fact that the form was missing a head.

The blood was everywhere in the kitchen, like an explosion of red mist that covered from the top of the refrigerator to the counter and doubling back again to pool all around his feet. Although for the most part the blood seemed to have gotten in place from a natural flow, there were small specks and strange symbols made out of motions that nothing natural could have caused. In fact, by the spot where Champion's head should have been, there was a small, red handprint that definitely couldn't have come about naturally. The handprint was so small that it looked like either a child's hand or the work of a very tiny person. Pushing himself back up, the image in front of him was suddenly very real and not just hallucinated.

Andy was standing in the center of the red river, his feet like stepping stones amid the horrible sight, for far too long before he jumped out to the clean tile and had to run to the bathroom. Afterwards, he stood up and wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand. Pulling his phone out with shaky hands, he tried calling April but it went immediately to the weird robotic voice that told him the phone wasn't even on. He tried everyone despite the phone reading that it was well past midnight, and no one answered his desperate calls. Even the call to Leslie went to voicemail, which Andy had never even heard before in his entire life. Putting the phone back in his pocket, another thought hit Andy.

Maybe it was all of the blood, or the strange string of events that led to this, but he couldn't get the image of the giant of a man walking from around his house out of his head. He couldn't forget that small procession, and the bag – the garbage bag that seemed to be moving. And it all seemed to make sense. They weren't walking from the streets, it wasn't a little stupid parade or whatever he figured from before, and it couldn't be that much of a coincidence that they seemed to be coming from _beside _his house. They weren't coming from the streets _beside _his house at all.

_They were leaving his house._


	4. Chapter 4

Andy sat still for a little while, and it didn't take long for the next song to come from the speakers. April had already moved away from him, and the sudden change left him holding one arm out awkwardly. He didn't know where any of this was coming from, but she was already closing her laptop and the music was abruptly brought to a stop while she moved from the living room to the bedroom.

"Honey?" he asked into the hallway, but she didn't answer.

She didn't really answer him all that much anymore.

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><p>That same memory caused by that sappy song was filling his head when Andy walked outside the house. He had made sure to grab pants and a heavy coat, happy to barely feel the effects of stepping out unlike last time, and now all he could think about was what had happened to April. The image of Champion was still firmly in place in his mind, and at some point he was going to have to deal with that, but as he looked across the street to the Davidson's he couldn't stop repeating that line in his head.<p>

_She didn't really answer him all that much anymore._

Outdoors, the few street lamps lining the sidewalks were either not functioning at all or were spaced so far apart from another working one that barely any light was getting out to the suburban roads. Even the grass, fixed and barely reflecting anything from those few dim bulbs, looked darker than usual. Andy's grip on the doorknob tightened and he might have started to work the thing off its post if his fingers hadn't started to hurt from the combination of cold and physical strain, but he couldn't wrap his head around this. Who was over _there_, across the street, and what provoked all of this?

What provoked Champion? What caused the small, still spreading liquid in front of the bedroom door?

Andy had all of these questions and more and, while watching his breath condense in the air around him was exciting for a time, he eventually stepped all the way out onto the front porch – or the singular step they jokingly called a porch – to look at the small house across the way.

There wasn't anything particular about the house, or the people that lived in it either for that matter, to make Andy suspicious of anything. The Davidson's were an old couple that had a few eclectic tastes like overly-jolly Christmas wreaths and the occasional Jesus statue that had an odd look in its eye but nothing that would have made Andy think they were at all connected to people willing or capable of something like the scene in the kitchen. Still, the only thing he could count as a reliable lead was watching people go from his house to the Davidson's. Then there was the clear evidence in the kitchen and the strange collection of events that could have been coincidences but were too striking to Andy to let go – this wasn't _Children of the Corn_ or some big city; nothing ever happened in Pawnee. Even if he had never made it as a cop, it wasn't for lack of awareness and knowledge even according to them.

His feet made a quiet, lonely tapping on the concrete as he walked out to the street itself. Looking around, there was still nothing at all happening in any of the houses or on any of their lawns, and Andy looked back at his own house to see the striking similarity It had to the rest of them. It was dead, blank, and no lights were allowed in or out which was strange considering he had explicitly left a light on in the entranceway. Quickly walking back inside, he saw that the lamp next to the window was indeed still. In fact, the house was incredibly bright to him. There weren't any curtains on that window because the two of them had never bothered to get that many curtains at all, and this was one of the many windows that was still sans-fabric.

Stepping back outside, the window was stark in contrast to the scene he expected: he expected to see the luminescence from the lamp, but was met with a rolling blackness.

"Uh," he muttered, scratching his chin.

Andy didn't know a lot about much, but he generally knew how windows worked. Stepping closer to the window, he couldn't even see his reflection in the thing with the small modicum of light available. Looking into one of the small panes, he took a step back slowly and swiveled around to see that the shadows surrounding his house suddenly felt closer to him somehow. Like they had moved while he wasn't paying attention to them, and likewise a few more of the streetlamps were out. The thought of even more darkness creeping in sent a shiver through Andy, but he remained focused on figuring out where the hell April was.

_She didn't really answer him all that much anymore._

* * *

><p>"April, you okay?" he called again, walking towards the closed door leading to their bedroom.<p>

When he got there, still not hearing a response from her, he tried opening the door. Shaking it a few times, he realized it was locked. He didn't even know they had a lock on that door at all, but there he was: jiggling the small metal handle to his own bedroom. There was a sound, like something heavy hitting the door, and the weight that had suddenly shifted on the frame slid down until he heard another small thumping noise from the ground.

"Go away," he heard April say in a quiet voice.

"What's wrong?" he asked, moving himself down to where he guessed her head was. "What'd I do?"

"Oh, nothing," she toned, sarcasm dripping from the syllables. "Nothing at all, Andy. Everything's totally awesome."

He sat down and pushed his own back against the door like he assumed she was doing. He didn't know where this was coming from, what it was even supposed to be about, but he didn't like it. Seeing, or hearing in this case, April this upset about something never sat well with Andy. The only problem was that she didn't seem all too interested in confiding in him, which was basically the sole tactic he had.

"Babe, you know we can talk about… whatever this is," he rolled his cheek on the door while he spoke, slurring a lot of what he had said.

"I said go away Andy," she hit the other side of the door hard and he heard her weight move off of the door as she walked away.

He could also hear her flop onto the bed, but there wasn't much sound otherwise. After a while sitting against the door and no sign that she was going to open up, he stood up and walked away from the door and headed out to the living room. He slept on the couch that night.

* * *

><p>The eerily black night seemed to be staved off by the house across the way, and Andy only realized that as he got closer and closer to the place. Every window held a reflection, and the streetlamps over here were actually working, but elsewhere things seemed to be dimming inward with the house as a center. Walking up the two steps to the front door, Andy caught a whiff of something sadly familiar, and recent too, and it was alarming that the smell of blood was coming from this place too. Knocking on the door frantically, he sighed and folded his arms when there was no response as if that would do anything to expedite the process.<p>

He knew no one was home, but something about the house was bothering him in a totally different way now. Different from the faint smell of metal and underbrush, or the way that the shadows outside crawled ever forward towards the house even as he stood there, and none of it was as disarming as knocking again on the door and realizing that the front door was actually open. It swung with a hesitant creaking groan, going all the way until it hit the doorjamb, and Andy was met by the unlit interior of the Davidson's. Despite the lighting, inside he could see something covering the half-wall nearest the living room. Stepping over to the wall, he could tell that close to it that there was blood covering this too. Just like the red mist in his kitchen, this too looked like an odd explosion of blood terminating in a small form lying, headless, in the center of a room.

This time it was the Davidson's cat, Richie, lying motionless there. Just like before, the handprint was blatantly placed where the head should have been. Luckily he held back from vomiting at all this time, but now he was confused – why would these people, if the old couple at lived here knew them, do something like this at all.

* * *

><p>April had lost sense of where she was, direction and orientation suddenly becoming meaningless, right when she woke up again. She could feel her hair falling downward, so unless something insane was happening here she was upside down. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot that she could recall or make sense of in that situation.<p>

She still couldn't see anything, but her other senses were picking up the vibes of the room well enough. There wasn't anyone with her there – wherever the hell _there _was – and it smelled terribly in there. Both things made her instinctively want to scream, but somehow she held back and tried to focus on any aberrant noises or distinct changes in the surroundings.

Some things you just sort of picked up being around Ron Swanson long enough.

* * *

><p>The carpets were dusty, every inch of the house smelled of cat, and Andy didn't know why but he was walking towards the sounds of rustling coming from another room in the house. It was a plastic rubbing at first, almost like a hand being scraped across leather at times, but as he kept getting closer and closer to where he thought the noise was coming from he had to take deeper breaths to steel himself. It was abundantly clear, sitting in the dining room staring at a small brown door leading to what he assumed was the basement or a cellar of some kind, that he was going to have to follow that noise.<p>

It suddenly dawned on Andy that he had made some interesting leaps of logic to get to this point, but at the same time his wife was missing and that was cause enough. He did, he remembered with a sigh, that he had literally _vowed _to protect her and as much as April thought that was a joke it was pretty damn important to him to keep that promise. It was one of the few that he was okay at keeping.

He couldn't begin to fathom why April would be in the Davidson's cellar, just feet away from a ritualistic murder of their housecat, but it was the best guess he had. Taking another breath, his hand curled around the doorknob and his heart gave a few hyperactive beats before he opened the door and was met by another, different odor to match the ones that he'd come up against the night. Another, more horrific one was lying in wait in the pitch black stairwell ahead of him.

He took one step into the darkness, his feet unsure if there would even be support there, and made the descent into the basement.


	5. Chapter 5

With each step, the growing cloud of black and odor grew, and Andy wondered what was even leading him down here. Why should he, of all people, be walking around in someone else's house when every single thing in there – the strange, grey miasma of dust to the corpse of a pet – should have told him to run away? In fact, Andy's real instinct was to turn tail and get the hell out of there. Something was compelling him, and it didn't take him very long to figure out what it was.

* * *

><p>April yanked her wrists in every direction, trying to break the plastic bonds but the deceptively secure ties weren't giving in to her attempts, and when that failed she tried moving back and forth. She didn't really know what that was supposed to be accomplishing other than making her feel like she was at least trying.<p>

It only took a few bumps into two hard surfaces on either side to realize that she wasn't going to get anywhere with that tactic. Still, she had to try – she rolled her ankles around like she was trying to crack them, hoping that maybe she was being hung with a terrible knot, she tried biting the plastic slip-tie, she tried everything she could think of.

Then, the metallic zipper on the bag stopped swinging abruptly. April's breath caught in her throat, movements stilled, as she watched a small gap of light expand slowly in front of her.

* * *

><p>Andy took another deep breath, his left hand tightening into a ball so he could feel the metal closer to his skin, and continued the laborious descent. Why someone had built a cellar so deep underneath the house was beyond him – and he certainly wasn't about to wrap his head around the depths he was traversing – but still he continued. Each step fell on wood like a lumbering weight, dropping what felt farther and farther every time, and Andy began to wonder if he'd ever reach the bottom.<p>

Why was he doing this again?

Right, April.

With that thought, however, he stopped. Why _was _he doing this for April? That question felt heavy in his head, like he desperately wanted to answer it but it terrified him at the same time – the night hadn't started out particularly grand for the two of them. It was, after all, nearly a tipping point for them. And, suddenly, his body felt much heavier than before. Andy's steps weren't as easy, and he didn't have the same grip around the ring that had found its way off of his hand.

In the small distance his eyes could make out, now adjusted slightly for the darkness, Andy could only see more and more steps trailing downwards. More problems, more struggles, more and more and _more._

Everything in front of him was just that: more. More effort from him; more nights away from home, more time spent trying to figure out what made April tick – more distance between them. No matter what he tried, there was always something more that he needed to do. More, he thought, and his hand twitched around the ring. More, he could feel the word all around him now, and suddenly this task seemed so incredibly stupid – the whole night falling on him as some ridiculous fever dream. Closing his eyes tight, Andy imagined that when he opened them he'd wake on the couch with Champion panting heavily right beside his hand.

Opening them, all he saw were a few of those strange red splotches from squeezing his eyelids so hard and the continuous, demanding staircase.

But then Andy thought about the sticky stain in front of the bedroom door. He thought what it would be like when he stopped trying, and when he went back inside and did nothing more than report this to the police, and what would turn up from a search. Andy thought what it would mean to have to witness a scene like the one in the kitchen at his house, yet another after this night, and what would happen to him when he gave up on looking for April. A ragged sigh came out of him, and he slipped the ring back on his hand while still wondering what possessed him to take it off in the first place, and Andy took one more step. When his foot met solid rock instead of another flimsy, wooden step his eyes snapped into focus the rest of the room – it was small, oblong extending further back to his right and into a lit corner, and the only entryway he could find was the one he had gone through.

Turning around, he looked up the staircase and – to his surprise – saw that there were, at most, six or seven steps from the kitchen door to the basement floor. Shaking his head at the obvious delusion, he looked back over to the lit corner of the room. There was dirt and naked stone blanketing the walls of the cellar, with small piles of dust and other debris scattered across the floor, and in that corner there was a small table with two objects, one roughly the size of a football, the other much smaller, and lamp giving a dark orange glow off. Next to the table was a rack – two tall and thick slabs of stone connected by a wooden pole at the top – and hanging from it was a large black bag.

The bag squirmed. Andy didn't feel his feet moving, but he was suddenly in front of it. He didn't hesitate to peel the bag open. His hands were more dexterous than he expected, and before he could think, there was a blinding pain in his lower stomach as something hard connected with his groin.

* * *

><p>April didn't think, she didn't even give herself time to see who it was, before she pulled her body back with what little abdominal muscle she had and shoved herself forward, headfirst, into the figure.<p>

"Oh…" a soft groan escaped from the man's lips, and April knew it immediately.

"Andy?" she asked, feeling less sorry and more relieved about hitting him. "Andy, get up."

"Well, small problem with that," he grunted, holding himself as he slowly stood up. "Give me… like, fifty years."

But still he walked over to her and fumbled with the knot at the top, holding her up so that she could force her weight on him. When he finished with the rope, her feet dropped but she had Andy to hang on to who let her down on her own a little less carefully than she expected.

"What… the fuck," he exhaled.

"Sorry," she apologized, rubbing her feet with her still bound hands. "I didn't see-"

"No, I meant – " and he waved his hands for emphasis, gesturing to the room and the bizarre lighting. "What the fuck?"

He had moved his around too, scanning the rest of the room, and when he ended his rhetorical his gaze seemed to be stuck on something further away in the corner. There, on the table, were the two heads of Champion and Richie sitting upright, staring across the room towards the staircase, with their eyes wide open.

April's mouth dropped instantly at the sight. The little black beads were lifeless, and there was no huffing torrent of breaths and drool, along with Richie's equally empty stare. Likewise, their mouths were dangling open in bizarre contortions. She must have been staring at them for so long, watching the flickering of the orange lamp dance off of the white bits of fur, because she felt Andy put his hands on her shoulders and move her to face away from them.

"Dude," was all she could say.

Andy still had one arm over her shoulder, and then her head started pounding yet again. Closing her eyes, it must have been obvious because she felt Andy's arm pull her closer to him. Somehow, she wasn't sickened by it.

"God, my head," she complained, pushing her hand through her hair until she moved over a strangely wet portion on the back of her head. "D'you know what's up?"

"No idea," he answered, looking at the back of her head as she felt around. "That looks gross."

"Really?" she could feel something caked in her hair and only a small area of warmth there. "I wish I could see it."

"Nah, that's pretty disgusting back there," he added with a small laugh before realizing the situation. "Look, I'm sorry."

She didn't know whether he was admitting to it, or even if he was just saying sorry because that was his tic, but April found she really did not care in that moment.

* * *

><p><em>Admitting to it.<em>

Andy woke up on the couch the first day after being kicked out of the room. Things were still a little unclear to him, especially concerning why April was _so _mad at him, but he chalked it up to something he said that got on her nerves that night. Usually, though, some wayward comment never got him in this much trouble.

That's what he figured up until the point he was told, quite clearly, to go away for the weekend.

"Why?" he asked, sincerely confused. "Did I do something wrong, babe? Tell me, because I'm pretty sure there's like ten thousand things I can do to make it better."

"Andy, seriously, just…" she shook her head and for a second Andy thought he saw something else in her eyes, "just leave me alone for the weekend or something, okay?"

"Honey," he tried putting his hand on her shoulder but her reaction was a sharp jerk away from him.

They sat like that, Andy staring at his hand in disbelief and April with a face of mixed anger and shock verging on apology, until he finally pulled away. He put his hands in his pockets and tried to meet her eyes but April was adamantly looking away from him with her arms crossed. Eventually she sighed and looked up.

"Andy, maybe it's over," she said suddenly.

Sudden was the only word he could come up with to describe it. Sure, it had been a bad week but they had been through rough patches before – most of them so easy to work through and caused equally by April and him – and now here April was with that. Here she was saying something that, honestly, scared him to death.

"Um," he stumbled, shaking his head. "I, uh, can I ask why?"

"Seriously?" she whispered darkly, her short temper clearly ready to flare up. "Seriously, Andy?"

"Yeah," he got out, pushing his shoulder into the wall for some amount of support.

"Late nights. Weekends. Time we used to spend together," she started, ticking things off of an imaginary list on her fingers. "I never get any of those anymore, and then you're always… you're always more than happy to go do Johnny Karate shows for all those desperate housewives."

"So?" he asked. "I mean, yeah I'm sorry it's been rough the last couple weeks but… I can stop doing the shows for-"

April just stared at him with that strange look, jaw pushed to one side and shaking her head, before turning around and slamming the bedroom door as she closed it. Andy stood there with his hands in his pockets for a little while longer before he eventually turned around and walked out of the house, none the wiser to the reason for that outburst.

* * *

><p>"Let's just, uh, not be here anymore," April glanced over to the table and they walked away from it towards the staircase.<p>

Andy grunted in response and together they walked through the Davidson's basement towards the staircase. As they moved, every step seemed to cause a shift underneath Andy's feet. Looking back, he still saw the eerie table and the animal heads. Further back, they shone a little with the cascade of lights and Andy wondered how he missed that the first time.

Up they moved, and again it felt like an eternity of stairs. When April complained, Andy just laughed and told her it could have been a whole lot worse. Crouching down, he let her on his back to piggyback as he continued up the bizarre stairwell. Eventually, they reached the door – this time the journey being far less exhausting and time-wasting than Andy's trek down – and the air on the surface felt much cleaner.

In fact, everything _was _cleaner.

Despite what he swore he saw, and the evidence beneath them, there was no red cloud scattered across a room with a dead cat as the centerpiece. Even downstairs, when they went to check it, Outside, it seemed as if the night was finally pulling back, but Andy still had a hazy feeling in the back of his head. Looking up, he could see the sun rising but around him things still had an oversaturated edge to them.

A car passed them on the street, stopping briefly at the intersection before making its way down Pawnee. A dog strolled through the Davidson's lawn, clearly unimpressed by Andy and April standing on the porch staring dumbly around them.

"What's up?" April asked, clearly confused why he was still looking around them.

"I, uhh… it was, like, super late at night when I went in there," he explained, changing his grip on April's legs behind his back. "And…"

"When you went in where?" she asked.

"What?" he returned, equally confused.

But the weight on his back was no more. Turning around, April wasn't behind him – and when he moved to look back out to the street she wasn't there either. The sun that was previously high in the sky was now hurtling across the sky at an alarming rate. Everything around him seemed to be going at a blistering pace – cars going faster and faster on the street until they reached impossible speeds, people walking around and seemingly through him at rates he couldn't understand, and animals taking looping paths around the house – and Andy's head started to spin wildly.

He felt himself fall over, but without the sensation of hitting the ground. In fact, all he could feel on his back was something warm and soft. Above him, the sky changed hues from black to blue to red and back in infinite sequence – changing, always changing, and never stopping for a moment. His eyes started to go fuzzy watching the pattern before things suddenly stopped.

Everything just _halted_ in front of him.

Feeling behind him to touch the warmth behind him, he was met with the calmingly soft back of someone. He anticipated movement, but as he continued moving around the backbone of what was behind him, Andy realized that even when he poked and pushed against the spine the thing behind him did not respond. It moved, it definitely moved, but not of its own accord.

Turning around, Andy's eyes refocused on something small in front of him. On that bed, which he now realized was his own, he made out a vague outline of April next to him. Or at least he assumed it was April.

Touching her shoulder, trying to wake her, his hand met no resistance where her neck should have been. In fact, when he moved his hand across her shoulder blade and over her arms he was met with a horrifying emptiness when he reached where her arm should have been. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Andy realized that he was in fact staring at April. The more technical description of what he was seeing would have been his arm caressing her torso and her head, on a chair across the bed, staring back at him.

And the sound that escaped his lips was the sort of anguished yell you don't get to hear a grown man utter all that often. It only grew in intensity over a few seconds, his hand shuddering on her skin, before erupting into a bloodcurdling wail when the head across from him blinked its eyes open and refused to move its gaze away from him.

* * *

><p>"You okay Andy?" a soft voice suddenly interrupted the blinding white static in his head.<p>

It was a short, cloaked figure that walked up to him. Andy looked around and realized that he was still in his car, the window rolled down now, and he was being confronted by a short, dark shape on the street.

"Uh, sorry," he shook his head. "Fine."

"Good," the voice answered.

Then it walked away, and when Andy turned around to try and call for them again there was no one behind him. Sitting back around in his seat, Andy looked ahead and saw that he was now driving – or was he still driving? – and ahead of him that figure in white, awkward steps and all, was standing in front of him waving for him to stop. But he didn't, or couldn't, and with a horrible thud the car rammed into the form.

Skidding to a stop, Andy got out of the car and only when the cold air stopped abruptly against his skin did he realize that he was wearing his favorite Colts jersey. It was even tucked in, which he had never done except on one occasion. Shrugging that off, he bolted to the body in the middle of the nondescript road. It was definitely wearing white, but he didn't expect to see that familiar short hemmed dress or the grotesque distortions on April's face while her body still twitched on road.

And then things started moving faster again, coming to an insane speed before abruptly slowing down, and then Andy's eyes opened once more.

This time, he only saw a small ring of people around a massive bonfire. In the center was the rack from the basement but fitted with a much longer pole, and in the center was a charred object standing upright. The dozen or so people standing around the blackening effigy were muttering something, each of them speaking in low harsh voices, and raising their clothed arms up and down in a strange, periodic fashion.

Andy looked around, expecting to see something else but all around him everything was dark. And his hands hurt suddenly, and looking down he saw that he was bound in a similar fashion to the thing across from him where the people chanted. In fact, looking back and forth, everything was identical in their postures – the feet bound with the knees hiked slightly, the hands fully extended, and staring straight ahead. Looking down, he saw a large pile of wood around his feet arranged in a circle.

Staring ahead, the burning form eventually crumpled into ash and fell into the bonfire and Andy understood what he was looking at in that moment.

"Elohim…" the voices were raising, a dark rumbling slur barely pronouncing the syllables of what he guessed were words. "Meth…"

Then something warm started creeping up Andy's feet and, looking down, he saw a small flame being lit beneath him. He shut his eyes tight, hoping that things would move again and he'd come across something else. Anything else so long as he could tell her how sorry he was – how much forgiveness he could ask for, despite having never been unfaithful, but he needed to her know that things would be okay.

Sadly, as he closed his eyes, the only thing changing was the proximity of the eager tongues of flame beneath him.


End file.
